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I'm looking for a service to get a latitude/longitude dynamically by zip/postal code.

I also need this service to give me an address (city/state/country) by providing an IP Address.

I will be using this service on my website and don't want to download and maintain a database.

I looked at a few services, some too expensive and some free with a max amount of daily/monthly lookups.

What are some good free services and what are some good paid services (Not too expensive) that allow for a large amount of queries?

I am using asp.net c# with MS SQL Server 2008 or later.

Thanks in advance.

PsychoDUCK
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    A comment: The economics of this are pretty simple: it costs money for the service provider to give the infrastructure and if it is of value to you, then their cost to you should be less than that value. – Iterator Aug 03 '11 at 16:31

2 Answers2

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The US zip codes are free (maybe just not very well maintained): http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tigermap.html#ZIP

Also see a (whole world) crowd sourcing project: http://www.freethepostcode.org/

The database of the UK zip code location was leaked last year or so. Or maybe it was made public by some government scheme I can't remember. It is definitely available here: http://www.freepostcodes.org.uk/

whoplisp
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For lat/long: Google and Yahoo allow for several thousand queries per day, at least the last time I used them.

For GeoIP lookup, I can't say. In the past, I've used aggregate data from Google AdWords. This may be true of other advertising networks, or some may give you info per user.

Iterator
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  • Google will work for geo look up by address/zip: (Max: 2,500 requests per day) [The Google Geocoding API](http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/geocoding/) GeoPlugin should work well for me as a web service to lookup by IP Address. This is free but not as accurate as Google. [http://www.geoplugin.com/](http://www.geoplugin.com/) But because I want a service I know will be up 99.999% of the time, i'm going to possibly purchase a database from [MaxMind](http://www.maxmind.com/app/city) or [zipcodedownload](http://www.zipcodedownload.com/Products/Category/Bundle/). – PsychoDUCK Aug 05 '11 at 14:41
  • Excellent. I think purchasing a DB is the right way to go for the long-term rather than a one-off project. Over time you may find little glitches in the data, and it's easier to normalize when the database is in-house. – Iterator Aug 05 '11 at 14:49